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Interview with Jon Friedman, Crash the Super Bowl finalist and creator of “Man’s Best Friend”

Posted by Beardy on January 26th, 2012

Crash the Super Bowl finalist, Man's Best Friend

Though I’m not totally crazy about some of Doritos’ picks in this year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest, I will admit that all of the 2012 finalists are….ok.  In fact, I think they all range from decent to awesome.  Last week I posted an interview I did with one of the creators of the CTSB finalist ad, Hot Wild Girls.  I mentioned that I thought his entry was one of the “awesome” ones and that I personally would be voting for it every day.  But this year, Fritolay has made it so you can vote a bunch of times in a bunch of different ways!  So I’ve been splitting my votes up between my two favorite ads; Hot Wild Girls and Man’s Best Friend.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that “Man’s Best Friend” made the final five; not because it was bad but because it was….I don’t know…pleasant.  It doesn’t assault your senses or your intelligence like some of the other finalists do.  Sure, it has a gigantic dog in it but it’s smart and subtle and even a tiny bit dark.  And the most amazing thing of all is that Man’s Best Friend was produced for only about 20 bucks!  So it’s really exciting to learn that that low budget, “homemade” ads still have a shot in this contest.

Man’s Best Friend was created by a very nice dude from Virginia named Jon Friedman.  Let’s get to know him, shall we?

VCN:    So Jon, tell me about yourself.  Who are you, where are you from?

JON:  I am a freelance graphic designer, filmmaker, photographer, and musician from Virginia Beach, VA. Filmmaking has always been a passion of mine, as is music (I play piano, guitar, and drums.) In the graphics world, I am best known for my design of the “Conversations with God” books, which have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. I was also fortunate enough to design Richard Bach’s last two books–he is the author of the classic books, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and “Illusions.”

VCN:  Have you entered many video contests in the past?

JON:  This is the first video contest I’ve entered.

VCN:  What made you want to enter the CTSB contest?

JON:  Well, I can think of a “million” reasons . . . But seriously, I’ve always thought it would be fun to make commercials. I’ve had a lot of ideas for them over the years, and while I was watching the commercials during last year’s Super Bowl I thought “why haven’t I entered this contest? This is something I’ve always wanted to do.” So I made a decision right then and there to enter CTSB the following year.

VCN:  Where did the idea for Man’s Best Friend come from?

JON:  The inspiration for “Man’s Best Friend” was triggered by a thought I had one night. It just occurred to me that in most ads involving an animal, the animal is always trying to acquire the product. So I thought to myself, “What if there was a twist on that, or it was the opposite of that?” After having that thought, the idea for “Man’s Best Friend” popped into my head. I think that’s how inspiration works in general. Something usually triggers it–a thought, a memory, a feeling. It can be anything.

VCN:  How was the ad produced?  What kind of camera did you use?  Mind if I ask what your budget was?

JON:  I shot the commercial for about $20 using a Canon 7D (which I already own). I had to buy some Doritos, a few props, and some dog treats. I originally thought the commercial would only cost $13 to produce, so I went way over budget. The most difficult part about the production was getting “Huff the Great Dane” to cooperate. He’s really just a gigantic 120+ pound baby who wants to run around, sit in people’s laps, and eat treats (he was also fond of shaking hands/paws with everyone). Huff knew the word “sit” but that’s about as far as his training went. It took some patience and cleverness to get what we needed.

Jon Friedman in Fritolay's secret underground PR bunker

VCN:  How and when did you find out you made the finals?

JON:  I don’t remember the exact date, but I received a phone call between the second and third week in December. I was told to keep quiet about it of course, so that was very difficult. It’s tough to walk around acting like everything’s normal when you get news like that!

VCN:  This is kind of an insider question but I think some readers will really like to hear the answer.  I’ve heard that actors in CTSB ads actually get paid SAG “scale” by Fritolay.  Is that true?

JON:  Yes, that’s true. I only had one on-screen actor in my commercial and he had to fill out a SAG contract.

VCN:   So who are you taking to the Super Bowl?

JON:  I’m taking my brother (and assistant director.) We often collaborate on creative projects and his help has been invaluable.

VCN:  What are you doing to promote your entry?

JON:  I don’t know that I’m doing anything too special–Facebook, local media, friends and family. I’m hoping that will be enough!

VCN:  What has been the reaction of your family and friends to all this?

JON:  They’ve been incredibly supportive and I think many of them are more excited than I am! I’m still in shock by the whole thing.

VCN:  Here on VCN we’ve talked a lot about finalists who are able to win the CTSB more than once. Are you already planning your entry for 2013?

JON:  I have so many ideas, and I’ll admit, I have thought about what I might do next year. If I don’t win the big prize this year (which I believe automatically disqualifies you from entering the contest again), I will probably enter it again next year. I had a lot of fun making this commercial, and even if I don’t win again, I know I’ll enjoy creating another one.

VCN:  Any final thoughts you’d care to share?

JON:  This whole experience has been amazing, and I still feel honored that “Man’s Best Friend” was chosen as a finalist. If people have any questions or comments they’d like to share with me, I can be contacted at jonathan@frame25productions.com
 

 
To vote for Man’s Best Friend, head here: www.mansbestfriendcommercial.com

 
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Jolly Rancher launches a video contest with no rules

Posted by Beardy on January 20th, 2012

Yo, suck on these!

I try and follow what goes on over on Poptent.net pretty closely and over the last few months I’ve noticed an odd trend developing.  It seems like more and more companies are running video “assignments” on Poptent that are sort of like the first phase of a larger video contest.  The brand’s judges review all the Poptent submissions they receive and then they select several finalists.  These finalists each get paid a few thousand dollars so the brand can post their videos on their websites or facebook pages for a few weeks.  Once the finalist videos are posted, fans of the sponsor are invited to vote on their favorite “consumer made” ads and the video that gets the most votes wins a big, fat cash prize.  So basically, companies are using Poptent so they can have their cake and eat it too.  Since there is so much talent over on Poptent the brand is almost sure to get a ton of high-quality videos to choose from.  (Bonus: they also don’t need to worry about non-winners posting their embarrassing, low-quality or offensive videos elsewhere on the web.)  And then when they run the second phase of the contest they also get the social media exposure that comes with running an online vote.  When all is said and done, the brand gets high-quality content, the are technically no “losers” so the fans don’t feel like the sponsor wasted their time, the sponsor’s website or facebook page gets tons of traffic and the directors that made the finals get at least a little cash for their trouble.

So it’s an interesting contest model.  But it really only works if all phases of the contest are run well.  The people at poptent obviously know what they’re doing so Phase One is guaranteed to run pretty smoothly.  But these types of contest can easily crash and burn once the brand takes over and launches the contest phase.  Case in point: Jolly Rancher’s Crunch ‘N Chew video contest.  Late last year Hershey’s ran a Poptent video assignment for their new product, Crunch ‘N Chew Jolly Ranchers.  In total they recived 189 videos which is a hell of a lot of submissions for a Poptent contest.  On Monday the company announced that they had picked three finalists and each winning filmmaker would be getting $2,500.  Then all three videos were posted on Jolly Rancher’s website for a month-long public vote.  After 30 days, the video with the most votes will be purchased by Hershey’s for $7.500.  And the winning filmmaker will be paid an additional $10,000 so they can produce two sequels to their first video. Hershey’s built a beautiful and simple webpage for the contest.  You can see it and all three of the finalist videos by clicking on this image:

Click to check out the actual site

As you can see, one video has already managed to get over 3,000 votes in about 4 days!  (Note: I’m writing this on Thursday night and the voting began on Monday morning.)  The website says you can “vote once a day” but 3,245 votes in 4 days still equals 811 votes a day!  That’s insane.  Unless you’re an Internet superstar, you’re not going to be able to pull down numbers like that.  So where are all those votes coming from?  Well, I did a little test and if you want to vote multiple times in this contest all you have to do is clear your web browser’s history and refresh the page.  Yep, it’s that easy.  You can vote an infinite number of times that way.

So I’m going to guess that most of Video #2′s votes came from the same computer.  Last night at 12:45AM I took a screenshot of the contest site and video #2 had 2,258 votes.  Nine hours later I checked the site again and video #2 was up to 3,022 votes.  So that video gained 764 votes overnight.  Right now it is 9PM on thursday night.  Since 10AM video #2 has only gained 223 votes.  How does a video get 764 votes in the middle of the night but only 223 votes during the day?  The only answer that makes any sense is that somebody stayed up all night voting for the same video over and over.

So these guys are cheaters and they should be disqualified immediately….right?  Wrong.  As far as I’m concerned anyone who casts multiple votes in this contest isn’t doing a damn thing wrong.  If you cheat in a contest you should get disqualified.  But “cheating” is BREAKING THE RULES.  And guess what?

The Jolly Ranchers video contest has no rules.

Seriously.  I’m not trying to be hyperbolic.  There are literally no rules for this contest.  The finalists have received no instructions from the sponsor and there are no rules on the contest site.  And if there are no rules, how can you possibly cheat???  The website says that “You can vote once per day through February 15th!”  But a single, random sentence isn’t legally binding.  And the site certainly doesn’t say you “may not vote more than once per day.”  How are contestants supposed to know what is ok and what isn’t if the sponsor doesn’t bother to tell them?  If Hershey’s REALLY didn’t want people to vote more than once a day, why did they make it so easy to vote over and over?

So frankly, you can’t blame the repeat voters.  The blame here belongs to whoever set up the voting phase of this contest.  I’m simply amazed that someone built that site without realizing people could easily vote for themselves as many times as they wanted.  I mean for Christsakes, $17,500 is at stake.  It’s just human nature to want to do everything you can to win a prize like that.  In fact, I don’t believe that no one realized this would happen.  I’m going to guess that the poor web designer or IT guy who set up the contest site probably tried in vain to explain to the marketing folks running this project that it was going to devolve into a pointless vote-a-thon.  I’ve been a tech and I spent years working with people in marketing.  They seem to just have a biological aversion to hearing about technical problems.  They pretty much just plug their ears and don’t want to acknowledge that something could go wrong.  And if they have to choose between fixing an important technical issue or preserving their vision well…their vision wins out every time.  So some marking person somewhere probably got the idea in their head that voting in this contest should be as simple as possible.  And the vision of a one-click vote wound up trumping common sense.

But as I said, the voting period in this contest lasts until February 15th.  That’s a long ways away.  Hershey’s still has plenty of time to fix this.  Because there are no rules the sponsor has no grounds to disqualify anyone.  And really, they don’t even have cause to throw out any of the votes.  But what they can do is post some freaking RULES.  Then if people get caught breaking those rules the company will have grounds to disqualify them.  But really, I think the smart thing to do at this point is just cancel the vote and pick a winner.  And maybe they can give the non-winners a little extra cash to compensate for what they’ve had to go through this week.  Seriously, this is one of the biggest video contest debacles I’ve ever seen and I would be freaking out if I had to endure a month-long, phony voting process. Right now this is a voting contest, not a video contest and that just sucks.

THURSDAY NIGHT UPDATE:  I was going to wait until Friday morning to post this but I’ll publish it now.  It’s now a little after 12:45AM and Video #2 is now up to 3734 votes.  That means that video received 1,476 votes in the span of 24 hours.  And 480 votes came in between the hours of 9PM and 1AM tonight.  That’s twice the number of votes that video got all day on Thursday.  Again, it’s not really possible to cheat in a contest where there are no rules but someone does seem to be voting for one of the entries over and over.  So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone at Hershey’s cares enough to do anything about this.

MONDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE:  Unfortunately, Hershey’s hasn’t done a thing to try and stop this out of control contest.  In fact, they have let things get much, much worse.  Video #2 is now up to 10,134 votes.  That means they got about 6,000 votes in 4 days.  But now, the team who created Video #1 have also apparently decided to try and win this contest.  Yesterday Video #1 had about 1,000 votes.  Today they have 4,000 votes!  As I keep saying, this contest has no rules so none of this can count as cheating.  But I have to ask, what the hell does Hersey gain from running a joke of a contest like this?

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE:  Someone who called himself “Jolly Fan” left a comment accusing me of being the creator of the video that has the least number of votes in this contest.  Just for the record, I am not.  I didn’t even enter the Jolly Rancher assignment.  Click the comments button to see “Jolly Fan’s” very un-friendly message.  If you read between the lines it seems pretty obvious that Jolly Fan is actually the creator of Video #2.

 
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Apparently I’m an “Inspiring Expert!”

Posted by Beardy on January 12th, 2012

Way to go, dork!

I did it! I finally freaking did it! I accomplished one of my personal “video contest goals!” I won….an iPad!! Can you believe it? If you’re a frequent video contest-entrant you already know that like half the contests on the web offer iPads as prizes. I’m guessing it’s because they’re a coveted and cool piece of technology that costs under $1,000. Somehow I knew I’d eventually win one of these things and I finally did it! The iPad 2 is part of my prize for coming in first in my category in Randstad’s “Inspiring Experts” video contest. Oh….and the other part of my prize is $10,000.

Ok, technically I don’t get to pocket the whole ten grand. I get 5K and the iPad and another 5K goes to the charity of my choice. I’m excited about the cash but in a weird way, I’m more excited about the money I get to donate. Yo, I feel like friggin’ Bill and Melinda Gates over here! I try and donate to a few charities whenever I can but I can never afford to give more than a few hundred dollars a year. So having the power to donate $5,000 to any cause I want is a rush. I’ve been thinking about this for days and I’m having a really hard time picking just one organization. My friends on facebook sent me some really great suggestions but I wanted to really do something huge with the money. I wanted to….you know….alleviate some human suffering with the cash.

This is totally amazing! I won first place in a video contest that was run by a company named Randstad and as part of my prize, the sponsor will donate $5,000 to the charity of my choice.  Yo, I feel like friggin’ Bill and Melinda Gates over here!  I try and donate to a few charities whenever I can but I can never afford to give more than a few hundred dollars a year.  So having the power to donate $5,000 to any cause I want is a rush.  I’ve been thinking about this for days and I’m having a really hard time picking just one organization.   My friends on facebook sent me some really great suggestions but I wanted to really do something huge with the money.   I wanted to….you know….alleviate some human suffering with the cash.

So I’ve decided to donate the whole nut to a group called Charity: Water.  The group’s mission?  “To bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.”  Water is the most basic of human needs.  If you don’t have water, nothing else matters.  There are a lot of water-related charities but one thing really makes Charity: Water special.  Here’s a quote from their website:

When we started charity: water, we made a bold promise to the general public — 100% of all their donations would always go directly to water project costs. Even the credit card fees from your donation today are taken care of, so a true 100% goes to people in need. Private donors, foundations and sponsors cover our operating costs; everything from staff salaries to basic office systems to office rent and supplies. This allows us to continue using 100% of public donations for water projects.

Is that an ingenious idea or what?  I think a lot of people are hesitant to donate to charities because they figure most of the money will be spent on salaries and other bureaucratic stuff. So finding a few millionaires to cover all the operating costs will make average joes like me feel like this group delivers the biggest bang for our charitable buck.

The thing that really sealed the deal for me though is that a donation of $20 gives one person in the developing world access to clean water.  And a single donation of $5,000 can fund an entire, large-scale water project for an entire village!  It takes 18 months to complete one of these big projects but apparently, people who fund an entire well get updates and photos of of how the project is progressing.  I haven’t really gotten into the final details of this with Randstad yet but hopefully they’ll be able to keep me in the loop as far as the updates go.

Randstad ran an amazing contest and they gave out a ton of prizes.  A bunch of other winners also get to send money to charity.  You can see all of the winning videos here:  http://www.inspiringexperts.com/videogallery  Rather than post my own entry, I thought I’d instead use this space to post a video or two explaining how Charity: Water works.  They’re a really awesome organization and there are a lot of thirsty people in the word.  So if you ever win a nice, big, fat contest prize and want to share the wealth, this is a very worthy cause:

More info at http://www.charitywater.org

 
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Guest Post: Watch Out, It’s Dot TV

Posted by Guest Author on December 16th, 2011

What is "Dot TV"? I actually have no idea

Beardy’s Note:  For the first time ever, VCN is presenting a guest post that was written by an author who would prefer to remain anonymous.  Here’s how this article came to be:  A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from a filmmaker and long-time reader of VCN that was having problem’s with .tv’s “Watch Dot TV” video contest.  The filmmaker had made the finals in the contest and he had a shot at winning the $10,000 grand prize.  The winner of of the contest was supposed to be determined  by facebook votes.  But right away, the voting seemed pretty fishy.  I’ll let our anonymous author tell the rest of the story but as you can probably guess, it doesn’t end well.  Initially I planned to do an article about this debacle myself but I knew the filmmaker could tell his own story better than I ever could.  This contest got pretty ugly and the filmmaker got screwed by the sponsors pretty badly so I suggested that we run this article without revealing the filmmaker’s name.

———————–

In the wild west of online video contests, Watch Dot TV, a part of the large Verisign corporation, has set a new low in taking advantage of its contestants. In October they solicited entries and their judges chose the top 10 videos who competed for public votes.   First Prize was $10,000, Second Prize was a Canon 7Dand Third Prize was a Panasonic GH2.

The voting in this contest ended more than a month ago and Dot TV is now over a week late announcing the winners.  They have not issued a single statement despite the plethora of agitated comments on their Facebook wall. Watch Dot Tv’s continued silence is the loudest admission of guilt they could make. They even went so far as to delete people’s comments on their wall demanding accountability.

So what happened?

During the voting, each Facebook user was allowed one vote per day and after 4 days the top two entries had around 500 votes. Within hours the top two increased their lead on the third place by almost double what it took them days to accumulate. After this anomaly I discovered how the top two entries had gotten a huge lead: They exploited an error in the voting system that allowed for more than one vote a day.

Simply opening the voting page in a new tab, or even refreshing the page would allow for multiple votes. I immediately emailed the contest administrator to make them aware of the voting system error and that it has already been taken advantage of by the top two entries.

They responded and said they could not recreate this simple error on their own.

This was the major red flag. I was not trying to explain the error to an Amish craftsman, this was an internet company that could not open their own Facebook page in a new tab and recreate the error.

The two entries had already gained an insurmountable lead and the contest administrator was turning a blind eye. My fear was that they would find and fix the error I made them aware of and then deny it ever existed, meanwhile the two entries would continue to win, and Watch Dot TV would have averted a PR headache.

That’s when I decided to expose the error by voting repeatedly so it could not be ignored and brushed under the rug. As soon as I gained a lead on two winning entries, within minutes, they began exploiting the error to regain their lead. I called in reinforcements to gain such a lead that the two entries would give up, be exposed as exploiting the error, and Watch Dot TV would have to restart the competition. I did gain a 1,000 vote lead and the two entries did stop trying to keep up, so now it was just up to Watch Dot TV to fix the error and restart the competition.

Watch Dot TV’s solution was to reset the number of votes to a previous point in time that the two entries had already gained their lead by exploiting the error. When I commented on Watch Dot TV’s Facebook wall that they did not reset the votes to a point in time before the error occurred, they deleted my comment. Red flag number two.

Dot TV's facebook announcement

I continued to email them the timestamped screenshots I had taken when I exposed the voting error and asked them to address their mistake. There was only a few days left of voting for Watch Dot TV to fix this.

Watch Dot TV didn’t enjoy being called to account. After my pleas in emails and on their Facebook wall to restart the voting, they disqualified me and another entry from the contest. (Beardy’s Note:  For some mysterious reason, the sponsors did not disqualify the two original elleged cheaters.  It seems they only disqualified people who tried to beat those two contestants at their own game.)  The entry in first place remained in that position until the end of the voting period. He was even promising to donate 25% of the prize to the Invisible Children organization in an effort to gain more votes.

There were even people on his facebook wall claiming they were using multiple accounts to vote for his entry. His video also violated the contest’s Official Rules and should have never been chosen as a finalist. His entire video was created by using previously published work, a direct violation of the rules.

I have never seen such disrespectful behavior by a company towards people from which it solicited video entries.

To this day the winner has not been announced and Watch Dot Tv has not issued any statements. (Beardy’s Note:  The entire contest and all the entries have actually been removed from Dot TV’s facebook page)  My only hope is that if they did give the prize money to entry that remained in first, despite having exploited the voting error and violating the official rules, maybe 100% of his prize found its way to the Invisible Children organization.

Watch Dot TV should be ashamed of the unprofessional manner in which it operated the contest and its parent company Verisign should exercise it’s parental responsibilities and put its misbehaved child in permanent timeout.

 

—  Written by: Anonymous. To learn more about the Invisible Children fund, head here  —

 

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Home Run Inn Pizza’s super creepy Halloween video contest winner

Posted by Beardy on October 30th, 2011

Boo!

Well, tomorrow is Halloween so it’s only fitting that today I post the creepiest, most disturbing video to ever win a video contest.  I must warn you that once you see this video, you can never un-see it!  So prepare yourselves for the horror that is the grand prize winner of Home Run Inn Pizza’s Halloween Video Challenge!

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize: $2,500 and a Halloween Party Pack:
 

 
Yo, that is some seriously freaky s#$%! If you think I’m being sarcastic, I’m not. There is just something about that video that makes my skin crawl. I’m sure the person who made that video didn’t intend for it to be so disturbing but that’s how it turned out. That flat, emotionless, robotic narration coupled with that simple and repetitive animation is just kind of haunting. And those monsters are just creepy as hell. What is up with the brown Frankenstein!? And does Dracula have such a big, fat head?? And why the hell are all those monsters walking in place like that!?

As you can probably guess, Home Runn Inn picked the winners of this contest through a public vote. And when a company holds a public vote, that is the kind of winner you get. In fact, who wins is basically irrelevant. The whole contest is just an excuse to get people to “like” the sponsor’s page on facebook. Some day I hope a company has the nerve to skip the part where people have to create an entry and just run a straight-up voting contest. If your name gets the most votes, you win!

I actually entered the Home Run Inn contest this year and no joke, I am glad this video won. I was just hoping to land in the Top 15 so I could win a year’s supply of free pizza and a special Flip camera. (I did!) So I got what I wanted and as a bonus, HRI Pizza wound up with a winning video that is totally insane. As weird as it is, you do have to respect the amount of work that went in to that entry. It might not be super slick but it’s better than any kind of animation that I could do. Of course, I think it’s possible that all those monsters were stock characters. And they were probably already programed to “walk” and that’s why they walk in every shot, even when they’re not moving forward.

This contest got a whopping 68 entries and if you’d like to see them all, head here. Happy Halloween Everybody!

 
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Low Budget Lighting Part Three: Putting it all together

Posted by Beardy on October 13th, 2011

Beardy’s Note: Here now is Part III of Cinematographer Jeremy Applebaum’s Three Part Low Budget Lighting guide.  In case you missed the first two installments you can read them here:  (Part I) (Part 2)  Big thanks to Jeremy for creating this very handy guide.  Remember, if you have an idea for a Guest Post of your own, be sure to send me an e-mail at videocontestnews@gmail.com.  And now, on to Part III…..

First here are the answers to the questions from Part II:

1: 4.16 (dived by volts = 120) or 5 (dived by volts = 100).  2: 2.  3: Yes.  4: No, Around 3.74, largely depending on how you round (dived by volts = 120) or 7 (dived by volts = 100).

In the first part of this series we went over what gear you should invest in for low budget lighting and in the second part we went over some basic electrical safety. This time I’ll explain how to put everything together to light a simple scene.

It should be noted that while stingers, multi taps, and surge protecters would be used in order to power our a lights, a lighting diagram as well as amperage calculations (per circuit) wonʼt be presented here. You should always take note of your amperage draw and be calculating your total draw on the circuit before plugging anything in. With that in mind lets get to work!

Let’s say that we are shooting a commercial for a contest and our script involves two actors; one sitting in a kitchen and the other standing in front on him.  It is to be assumed that our kit contains*:

– 2 Work lights, 1 500 watt fixture, one 1,000 watt fixture (a stand with 2 500 watt fixtures)
– 1 China Ball
– 4 clamp lights
– 5 Pony Clamps
– Clothes Pins
– Tin Foil
– 2 Sheets of each white and black foam board
– Gloves
– Various Bulbs
– Various Stingers, Multi Taps and Surge protecters

A rough diagram of our scene would look something like this:

Note: For these examples the exact wattage of the lamps doesnʼt matter

So were do we begin? The first light that we will need for a our scene is a key light. This is probably the most important light you can place as it determines were all the other sources will come from. What I would do here is take my 1,000 watt work light, place in right hand corner and bounce it off some white foam board (or tinfoil, depending on your tastes) onto the subjects. This would give me a large, soft, directional lighting source that I can then build off for the rest of scene.

While it should be assumed stingers/multi taps would be needed to power our lights, the exact amount needed/used isnʼt important

The next thing I would do is to start adding some fill light. I would proceed by taking my paper lantern and hanging it overheard. This would give me a more even, all around, soft light while not canceling out the effect of the key. It would also help light the background.

I made these images using Google SketchUp and its 3D warehouse. Special thanks goes out to who ever created the templates that I used in creating these diagrams.

So now that we have a strong key light, and a multipurpose fill light it is time to start adding some highlights and more focused fill lights.  While the paper lantern provides overall fill, we will still have a little too much contrast between the key light and the non key light sides.  To remedy this I would then take two clamp lights, and place one at each the opposite side key of our talent.

A china ball is hard to make in that program!

At this point our scene should look good enough that we could go ahead and shoot the commercial. However there a few more things you could do to make our actor or some of the props stand out. One would be to take your clamp lights and use them to highlight certain objects in your scene. You would do this if there was something in your scene you wanted to call special attention to (like the product or something important to the story).

The other thing that you can do would be to place backlights on the talent. The backlights would provide a nice shine to the back of your actors heads and makes them pop out a bit. Be careful though, if your backlight is too bright it can make your whole scene look cheesy.

Yep, that's a lot of clamp lights

Remember that this is just a sample lighting diagram and won’t work for all angels or shots. You may very well have to tweak or move lights out of the way for a different angel. Furthermore this example, while very broad and general may not work for all circumstances and is just to give an idea how these lights can be used.  When on your own shoots you may very well find that you like the look of the scene with only the paper lantern and clamp lights or you may not like the look the paper lantern gives at all! The best way to learn is to go out there and shoot something. Donʼt be afraid to experiment and mess up, itʼs the best way to learn.

If you liked this article, have any questions, or think I missed anything please speak up below.

* This is not to be considered an end all be all kit, just a basic kit with several options to light your scene with.

**You may want to use parchment paper attached with c-47s to soften the lights or a dimmer to control the brightness of the lights. If you do choose to use parchment paper please allow the lamp some room to breath.  You should not allow the parchment paper to directly touch the lamp. CFL (compact fluorescent lamps) lamps wonʼt dim.


—     Guest Post by Jeremy Applebaum. Check out Jeremy’s “Virtual AD” app here    —

 

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Interview with Max Traylor of HighlyHumourous.com

Posted by Beardy on October 10th, 2011

This week I’m happy to welcome a new sponsor to VCN, the video contest site HighlyHumorous.com.  Since Highly Humorous is brand new and since they are kind of different than the other video contest sites you might be familiar with, I thought it would be nice to talk to one of the site’s founders, Max Traylor and get the scoop on what’s going on over at HH.

VCN:  So what inspired the creation of Highly Humorous?

MAX:  Well, the five of us (Max Traylor, Adam Hauff, Greg D’Aleo, Jordan Berger, and Tom Blakeley) were about to graduate from business school last year and we knew we wanted to start a business where we could have fun. We saw the success of large video contests like Crash the Superbowl and we knew that video contest websites were getting pretty popular. We also loved watching funny videos on comedy sites like College Humor and Break.com so we started to develop this idea of a video contest comedy website hybrid. It turned out to be a pretty good idea so we ran with it.

VCN:  What do you think sets HH apart from other video contest sites?

MAX:  HighlyHumorous was designed specifically for comedy teams and organized groups of creative filmmakers. Just like Facebook brand pages, a highlyhumorous video channel is an opportunity to showcase what a comedy team can do as a brand. There are thousands of comedy teams out there, each with their own style and tight knit following. HighlyHumorous is a platform where these creative teams and their followings can compete against one another. One of the really unique things about HighlyHumorous is that there is much larger scale competition among the teams than simply one video contest.  We have a leader board, which takes into account the total points that each team has earned from all the competitions that they have participated in.  This allows the teams to compete on a more macro level than any other video contest website.

Sponsoring a contest for a brand means that they are tapping into the energy and organization of these teams AND the communities they are a part of, instead of reaching out to individual filmmakers with a smaller social footprint. Keeping a steady flow of contests also benefits the comedy teams. They have a chance to win cash for their videos, and they build a diverse portfolio for brand advertisements in the process. In a business sense, HH plays cupid for business to business relationships between brands who are in need of creative assets, and brands who specialize in creating engaging material for their fans.

We also try to make the platform more entertaining for viewers by allowing comedy groups to populate their video channels with material not related to our contests. Comedy teams can show off their funniest videos, announce their own live shows, plug their own social networks and websites, and collaborate with others who have the same love for comedy.  Teams also have a wall on their profile where users and other teams can interact with the team and leave comments.  We really wanted to make HighlyHumorous more social and engaging than the other video contest websites that we had seen.

VCN:  How can someone win prizes on HH?

MAX:  There are two ways you can win a prize in a contest. First, you can win the popular vote. When you submit a video to a contest any registered HH user can award that video between one and five stars. The amount of stars or (points) the videos collect determine the popular vote winners. Secondly there is an additional cash prize awarded by a team of judges. Sometimes this panel of judges will include the HighlyHumorous staff, also known as the “High Council”, but it may also include representatives of a sponsoring brand.

VCN:  Some video contest filmmakers are wary of contests that require voting because of cheaters.  What steps have been taken to prevent cheating?

MAX:  Preventing cheating is next to impossible. Anyone can write a silly program that will shoot their video to the top of the voting charts. One of the measures we have taken to keep the game fair is to recognize when a video is collecting illegitimate votes. As soon as a video is submitted to a contest we watch it like a hawk. We know who shares the entry, when they share it, and what networks it goes to. We can then track how many people are interacting with that video and how many are coming back to vote on it. Additionally, we require voters to be registered users on HighlyHumorous.com. We look very closely at the winning entries, who voted for them, and when. We know when someone is collecting illegitimate votes from users that do not exist, and we disqualify them.  Additionally, each registered user of HighlyHumorous can only cast one vote per video and no vote can negatively affect the video’s score.

VCN:  What kind of contests do you expect HH will run in the future?

MAX:  Many of our future contests will feature sponsoring brands that are eager to see what kind of ideas and commercials our creative community can put together. In addition to these sponsored contests we are planning smaller side contests which give our community a little more creative freedom, like parody contests. We will always have something going on to engage our content creators and to provide our viewers with a constant stream of unique videos.

 
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Mike’s Hard Lemonade “Hard Sports” Winners

Posted by Beardy on October 6th, 2011

This summer, Mike’s Hard Lemonade asked their facebook fans to “Submit a humorous and original video demonstrating the determination, hustle and spirit you and/or your team bring to your favorite and fun “HARD SPORTS” activity, such as (but not limited to) kickball, dodgeball, ping pong, Ultimate Frisbee, or cornhole*.”  There was a public voting period but it was only run to determine a set of 20 finalists.  Then a panel of judges picked the top three winners.  First place was $10,000 to be used to support the winners sporting endeavors.  Second place was $5,000 and third was $2,500.  And as a bonus, the 17 non-winning finalists each recived a mike’s hard lemonade “Sponsorship Kit” that included stuff like Mike’s T-shirts, sweat bands and gym bags plus some sporting equipment.  Each of these kits had an AVR of $500.  So it was a pretty sweet runner-up prize.  Here’s the video that took the top prize.

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize:  $10,000:
 

Not too shabby. I really admire the fact that these guys decided to shoot in the rain. It really added to the wackiness of the video. If it had been me, I would have canceled the shoot for sure. So good for them for going for it.

Overall, this was a really nice of example of how to run a GOOD video contest on facebook. Yeah, there was public voting but there were 20 finalist slots so anybody who really cared could have made the second round pretty easily. And as I said, judges picked the winners so Mike’s was able to avoid pissing off a bunch of their fans by letting some cheater win the grand prize. And 17 runner up prizes worth $500 each really showed that Mike’s actually respected and appreciated all of their finalists. If by chance some contest organizer reads this post, I hope you’ll take a lesson from this contest. It was fun and fair and a good model to follow. The rules are still online if you want to read the fine print for yourself.

*I’m going to assume (and hope) that they type of corn-holing they are referring to is a game of bean bags.

 
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